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Comment by nequo | Hacker News Reader

In reverse? Do you mind sharing a couple examples? I’m not a French speaker and this sounds intriguing to me.

French has "verlan", which is when you swap some of the syllables of a word to give it a slang or "street" vibe.

The world "verlan" itself is verlan for "envers" ("in reverse")

Cute, same thing in Buenos Aires Spanish.

TIL and this clicks a lot with Italian slang in the town I growth where we did exactly this as early teenagers 30 years ago.

I think the reference is to Verlan, where the syllables in a word are inverted. It reminds me of "Pig Latin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan

Look up verlan. It’s a type of French slang where you reverse syllables or sounds of words.

“Verlan” itself comes from the reverse of “l’envers” which means “reverse”.

And "l'envers" is pronounced lanver

Who has time for that?

It’s street slang, for the same reason Cockney rhyming slang exists: solidarity and so that their so-called “betters” don’t understand them.

I imagine kids/teenagers originally, as with many linguistic innovations. But of course such people grow up and their conventions become mainstream.

spanish has the same thing where you call your friend "chupa nepe" instead of "chupa pene".

What do you mean "who has time"? It doesn't take more time to e.g. say "meuf" than to say "femme".

Here's a classic example :

Je suis allé à une teuf de ouf => je suis allé à une fête de fou

Literally :

I went to an zeecray teepar => I went to a crazy party

C'est pas oim => c'est pas moi (It's not me)

Fais pas ièch => fais pas chier (stop bothering /(f*cking with) me)

Je l'ai ken => je l'ai niqué(e) (I screwed him/her)

They likely meant non-standard word order in a sentence. Not reading the words backwards.

No, it's speaking the word backwards, syllable-wise.

L'envers becomes verlan, femme becomes meuf, fête teuf, louche is chelou and merci is cimer, for the most common, everyday words.

It can even go further, with Arabe becoming Beur which itself gets verlanised into Rebeu. Or meuf, femeu.

I thought Beur was from Beurre and its yellow color

The (racist) stereotype is that Asians have yellow skin, not Arabs...?!

What color would be associated with the Arabic ethnotype ?